Being very insulin resistant I have been using 150 units (75 twice a day) of Lantus and 1 unit per carb consumed of NovoRapid for, depending on meals, up to 200 units of the rapid insulin a day. However this allowed me to achieve good BG control dropping my A1C from 9.3% (on oral medication) to 5.4% in 10 weeks.
Strange thing that happened to me was I took my 60 units of NovoRapid after a 60 carb dinner and 4 hours later took 20 more for a snack and 2 hours later took my Lantus as has been my normal dosage routine for two months now. I woke up about 1:00 AM in the worst hypo I have ever experienced. I was so unstable I could not even test. I immediately ate 4 Lifesaver candies followed by another 4 and after about 20 minutes felt well enough to test. At that point I was at 2.9 mmol. I ate another 4 candies and finally pulled my BG over 4 mmol and went back to sleep. Somehow my pancreas had produced enough insulin to make my injected insulin overdose me.
The next day I cut back my insulin taking no Lantus and only 1 unit per 3 carbs of NovoRapid. Even this reduction had me in the low 3 mmol range for the day. I had a very high carb dessert that night taking no insulin to pull me out of this low sugar state and after 2 hours had my BG up to 4.7 mmol. Again I took no Lantus going to bed and woke up the next day with a fasting BG of 5.2 mmol and went the rest of the day taking only my Metformin and no insulin at all and for the past five days now have maintained BG,s of between 4 and 7 mmol.
Has anyone ever heard of this happening to someone who had very poor BG control for nearly 2 years when oral medication was not working well anymore but then had excellent BG control for 2 1/2 months?
I haven't heard about it but don't know all that much about oral meds. Insulin works very effectively, if you can figure the rates and ratios out, which can be very challenging. It sounds like you're rockin' it though!
Hey Chas, Insulin resistance can change, especially for a T2. If you have been doing some of the good things that we T2 are encouraged to do there will be a pay off. I was taking a similar amount of insulin before I got busy with diet and exercise. Today my insulin intake is about 50 units a day.
Another thing I have noticed is that it seems my pancreas will wake up so to speak and I will have the kind of unexpected lows you are talking about. Happened to me just last night when I found myself suddenly looking at a 47 read. Thank Goodness that it doesn't happen often.
That is the other strange thing about this change is that my weight is fine and remains steady so I neither exercise or diet. I eat what I want and it seems my pancreas is adjusting. When I was using mealtime insulin I would just inject what I needed to cover the carbs and sometimes that could be 140 units and I could still achieve 7.5 mmol (135) 2 hour post meal. As diabetics go I consider myself fortunate as all my lab work readings are in normal range.
Yes, as one is working on insulin getting the weight off and eating a restrained diet ( 1200calories for me) my pancreas came back to work after 26 years and I had to yank the insulin, starlix pills off fast.
I ended up on 2 or 3 units of humalog lispro U-100 - 4 hour lasting fast insulin and metformin only. Research that has been done is suggesting if one can get the glucose and oxidative stress off the islets, they can come back from a rip van winkle state and go back to work. Some italians had some islets from cadavers that were normal and type 2. They expected to find damage in the type 2 islets and could not. Next they provided normal glucose load on the type 2 islets and were shocked when they found they were producing insulin. This was in 2004.
When it happened to me I had cgms working so caught it early and fast and quickly remove dthe excess insulin.
